Gwyneth Paltrow takes New York Times to task over ghostwriter claim

Gwyneth Paltrow.
(Pascal Le Segretain - Getty Images)
Update: A rep for the New York Times told E! News, “The article does not merit correction.”

Original post

The non-conflict of the century is upon us.

On one side, we have actress, celebrity newsletter writer and cleanse shiller Gwyneth Paltrow. On the other, the New York Times’ dining section. Here we go.

In a March 14 article titled “I Was a Cookbook Ghostwriter,” reporter Julia Moskin talks about her time working with chefs on their cookbooks and about the practice in general.

For part of the piece, Moskin talked to writer and chef Julia Turshen, who worked with Paltrow on the actress’s best-selling cookbook, “My Father’s Daughter.”

Although Moskin does not say in the piece that Turshen was Paltrow’s ghostwriter, the article’s illustration uses the cover of “My Father’s Daughter” with the caption, “Gwyneth Paltrow’s ghostwriter is Julia Turshen.”

Paltrow says this is a fallacy. She tweeted, “Love @nytimes dining section but this weeks facts need checking. No ghost writer on my cookbook, I wrote every word myself.”

(Celebrity chef Rachael Ray has also denied the article’s implication that she has used a ghostwriter.)

For the record, Turshen’s partnership with Paltrow is not in question. In the cookbook’s author’s note, Paltrow writes, “I literally could not have written this book without the tireless, artful assistance of Julia Turshen.”

Paltrow continues, “She quantified, tested, and retested every recipe, oversaw the production of the photos, helped brainstorm in a crisis, and, above all, was my intellectual and emotional support through the whole process.”

But clearly Paltrow is upset by the implication that she didn’t write the actual words in the cookbook and wants the world to know it. Instead of e-mailing the article’s author and presenting what she sees as the facts, she tweeted a call for a correction to her 811,00 followers.

So far, one has not been given for what appears to be a semantics issue. And somehow the world continues to turn.

Comments our editors find particularly useful or relevant are displayed in Top Comments, as are comments by users with these badges: . Replies to those posts appear here, as well as posts by staff writers.

To pause and restart automatic updates, click "Live" or "Paused". If paused, you'll be notified of the number of additional comments that have come in.

Comments our editors find particularly useful or relevant are displayed in Top Comments, as are comments by users with these badges: . Replies to those posts appear here, as well as posts by staff writers.